Formidable Forms integration for wpDataTables

Video versionA video overview of Formidable Forms as a new table type

After you install and activate Formidable Forms integration for wpDataTables plugin, a “Formidable Form” table type will be integrated as a data source in your wpDataTables plugin. You will be able to create wpDataTables based on your Formidable Form entries using the “Create a table linked to an existing data source” page.

Formidable Forms integration for wpDataTables is an add-on and like that requires installed and activated wpDataTables and Formidable Forms plugins on your WordPress website to be able to work!

Please note that tables created with Formidable Forms integration are NOT editable. We are currently working on adding the feature to edit the entries directly from data, but the current version does not support that. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the notification when the feature will be released!

Example of a Formidable Form based table

The first thing you would need to do to create a Formidable Form based wpDataTable is to prepare a Formidable Form, and at least one form entry in it. In this tutorial we will create a wpDataTable based on a dummy “Job Application” form that has 3 entries. Each form field will be shown as a wpDataTable column and each form entry will render one row in the wpDataTable. On the left side you can see a dummy form that will be used in this tutorial.

Form fields that can be displayed in wpDataTable as columns are: “First Name“, “Last Name“, “Email“, “Home Phone“, “Mobile Phone“, “Address“, “Employment Desired” but it is not required to show all of them in the table.

After the form is created, and one or more entries were added, you will be able to create a wpDataTable based on this form. To do that first go to wpDataTables -> Create a Table and choose Create a table linked to an existing data source option and click next.

Define a name for your new wpDataTable, which will help you to find the table later, and choose “Formidable Form” as the Input data source type. After you choose Formidable Form as a table type, a new selectbox “Choose a Formidable Form” will appear. There you will need to select a form, which needs to be rendered in a wpDataTable. In this tutorial we will use the “Job Application” form.

After selecting a form that will be used as data source, a new “Choose fields to show as columns” selectbox will appear. Use this selectbox to choose form fields that will be used in the table. Form fields are separated in two categories: Form Fields and Common fields.

FormFields are the fields that were defined by user in the process of creating a Formidable Form. In this case these fields are: “First Name“, “Last Name“, “Email“, “Home Phone“, “Mobile Phone“, “Address” and “Employment Desired“.

Common Fields are the metadata fields, containing additional data about the entry, that can be added in every Formidable Form based wpDataTable and they are always same: “Entry Date“, “Entry Id“, “User” and “User IP“.

It is not mandatory to add all of these fields to create a wpDataTable. In this example we will add “First Name“, “Last Name“, “Email” and “Address” from the Form Fields category and “Entry Date” from the Common Fields category.

When you choose all the fields that you would like to show in the table, click Apply and a wpDataTable will be created and displayed in the “Table preview and columns setup” block. You can see on the image on the left that the new wpDataTable has 5 columns. 4 columns created from Form Fields and one created from Common Fields (“Entry Date”). Each row represents one form entry that was previously added in the form.

Formidable form table settingsFormidable form based table has additional settings

Each Formidable form based wpDataTable receives an extra Formidable settings tab on the table configuration page, with some additional table settings. Using this tab you can define which form entries will appear in the wpDataTable based on the entry date, by choosing one of the two possible filtering logic options in the Filter by date selectbox. You can select between Filter by date range and Filter by last X time period, or you can leave this block empty if you don’t wish to filter form entries that are displayed in the table.

Filter by date range – If you select this option, two input fields (“From” and “To”) will be displayed right to the Filter by date selectbox. By choosing some date values in these datetimepicker input fields, wpDataTable rows will be updated by date range when entries have been added to the form.

Filter by last X time period – By choosing this option, also two input fields will be displayed right to the Filter by date selectbox. In the first one you can add number of periods (e.g. 30), and in the second one you can choose between (Day(s), Week’s, Month’s and Year’s). By selecting e.g. “30 Day(s)” you will filter and display in wpDataTable just entries that are added in last 30 days in the Formidable Form that is used as data source for this wpDataTable.

(Optional) - Define additional column and table settings

At this point table is already prepared. But to improve the usability we need to define some additional settings for the table and for its columns. In this case we defined these settings:

Insert the wpDataTable in your page or post

When configuration of your Formidable form based wpDataTable is finished, you just need to insert it in your post or page.

Open (or create a new) a WordPress post or page, place the cursor in the position where you would like to insert your table, click the “Insert a wpDataTable” button in the MCE editor panel, and choose the CSV-based table that you prepared.

Or, if you prefer to do things manually, you can just copy&paste the wpdatatable shortcode (you can find it in the wpDataTables browse page, or in wpDataTable edit page).

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